Martin Peretz, professor, philanthrophist, long-time supporter of Al Gore and publisher of the New Republic is apopletic at the selection of Chas Freeman as prospective chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Foreign Policy summarizes the controversy over Freeman.

The Cable reported last week that former U.S. diplomat Chas Freeman was up for the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council. Since confirmed, the story has set off something of a media firestorm.

Reports from Politico and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, along with commentary and blog posts from The New Republic’s Marty Peretz, the Witherspoon Institute’s Gabriel Schoenfeld (in the Wall Street Journal), and former AIPAC official Steve Rosen have conveyed the charge that, in the judgment of some pro-Israel activists in the United States, Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, is too sympathetic to Riyadh’s worldview and has frequently spoken outside the traditional Washington discourse on Israel.

But this bland, matter-of-fact recital by Foreign Policy hardly does justice to the vividness and choice vocabulary of Peretz’s denunciation of Freeman, who he practically characterizes as a footman and flunky of the Saudi Royal House. Peretz writes:

Freeman is a bought man, having been ambassador to Saudi Arabia and then having supped at its tables for almost two decades, supped quite literally, and supped also at home, courtesy of Prince Bandar, confidante of the Bushes who as everybody knows became extremely wealthy through the intimacy with the royal house, a story that has not been done adequately ever. …

Chas Freeman is actually a new psychological type for a Democratic administration. He has never displayed a liberal instinct and wants the United States to kow-tow to authoritarians and tyrants, in some measure just because they may seem able to keep the streets quiet. And frankly, Chas brings a bitter rancor to how he looks at Israel. No Arab country and no Arab movement–basically including Hezbollah and Hamas–poses a challenge to the kind of world order we Americans want to see. He is now very big on Hamas as the key to bringing peace to Gaza, when in fact it is the key to uproar and bloodletting, not just against Israel but against the Palestinian Authority that is the only group of Palestinians that has even given lip-service (and, to be fair, a bit more) to a settlement with Israel.

In the paragraph above, one might object the phrase “a new psychological type” and indeed, Foreign Policy hints that the controversy over Freeman goes beyond the ambassador himself. FP says:

In conversations with The Cable, some Washington foreign-policy types have argued that the controversy may be more about the president than about Freeman himself.

A source close to Freeman said that among the critics taking shots at the would-be appointee, several “opposed Obama on the spurious ground that he wanted to do in Israel. He doesn’t.” The source noted that some critics of Obama’s appointments had also targeted national security advisor James L. Jones, who previously served as a U.S. envoy charged with strengthening the Palestinian Authority and its security forces, as being too even-handed. “It seems to be the president these guys are after,” the source said.

In other words “a source close to Freeman” argues that he’s not an anomaly at all, but a chip off the old block. The translation of Freeman’s roundabout defense is as follows: ‘people are criticizing me because they don’t like the President’s policy and that policy is consistent over other people besides me.’ Whatever you think of Freeman, he has a point. The Center for Security Policy has just released a study entitled the “Rise of the ‘Iran Lobby’: Teheran’s front groups move on– and into– the Obama Administration“. We’ve got to talk to them all. This is what engagement is all about, isn’t it? Given this circumstance several commenters at Peretz’s site were shocked, positively shocked that Peretz should be shocked. Here’s a sampler of comments.

Now, first the $900 million for Gaza, next, apparently, Chas Freeman. What else will you have to endure over these next four – or eight – years? Are you already nostalgic for the ghastly George Walker Bush administration? …

Mr. Peretz, at what point do you acknowledge that your certitude about Obama good sense prior to his election is now in serous doubt barely four weeks into his presidency?

Between this and the outrage of Durban II, it’s become painfully obvious what Obama’s true feelings are – politically and otherwise – about the State of Israel.

Folks: You are getting what you supported and voted for. Live with it.

The most cruel comment of all was this: “Marty: 78% of American Jews voted for B.O. Among them, you were one of his loudest cheerleaders. Contempt is less than thine stupidity deserveth.” Now Mr. Peretz may be wrong and Ambassador Freeman might be a completely misunderstood man. However that may be, the fact remains that Peretz has changed his mind under the impact of new information. He has revised his expectations about this particular BHO appointment a posteriori; that is to say looking back on what happened. We all have to revise our expectations in life, not always for the better. A priori happens at weddings. A posteriori at divorces. Mr. Peretz now has an a posteriori opinion of BHO’s judgment at filling the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council. What is his revised judgment of Obama himself?

But if some people of erudition and refinement have misjudged Mr. Obama it isn’t because they are bad or lousy people. On the contrary: I think that many of those who recognized BHO correctly from the beginning did so because they were a little bit shady themselves; the sort who watch people’s hands in dark alleys; are on the lookout for marked cards at games of chance and think twice before ordering a drink for an inordinately friendly lady at a seemingly respectable establishment with no prices on the bottles. These are the sort of people who would know beforehand what Peretz has come to realize belatedly.

But as they say, better late than never. Handsome is as handsome does. In the matter of Chas Freeman, remember who appointed him.

79 Comments, 79 Threads

1.
Rob

Over seventy percent of US Jews voted for Obama. Now, they know one billion dollars of their tax money is going to support Hamas and its planned destruction of Israel. And now a Saudi stooge is the gatekeeper for the President’s intelligence assessments. The irony of the Jews repeating history would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Peretz was a huge Obama supporter. When will he be able to admit his error? Will it be too late?

The other day I read an interview with Niall Ferguson who predicted a civil war in the United States before all of this is over. At the time, I thought he was exaggerating. I do not think so now. Obama plus the economy is a nightmare. I do not recall ever feeling so anxious about an American President.

If anyone is interested, the interview was in The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper.

Obama sat in the pews of Jeremiah Wright’s church for 22 years listening to the most virulent, rancorous anti-Semitic hate speech since Hitler and Himmler. Obama believes this stuff. He is an anti-Semite of the worst kind. Not only is Israel in danger, so are American Jews.

Freeman is not the only radical appointed by Obama. The appointments to the Office of Legal Counsel and the head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ, and the bug eyed zealots on environmental policy – Hodren, the socialist Carol Browner, etc., to name a few, all demonstrate that Obama is a hard lefty who successfully fooled a lot of credulous wishful thinkers into voting for him.

It was not a fluke that Obama and Biden *both* voted to the *LEFT* of the declared socialist in the Senate, Bernie Sanders.

When you have a socialist in the White House and socialist majorities in both Houses of Congress, this is what you get.

We are only still at the beginning of finding out who/what “sent” Obama. To say that “Chicago” sent Obama would be, I think we will find out, simplistic. There is an ideological factor in the “sent-ness” that is difficult to define (since it is ideological and not residing solely in the office of Mayor Daley), and which people such as Peretz did not want to define.

Of the truly amazing things about Obama is his willingness to tell you what he’s going to do and then do it. He’s been as good as his word. Remember he told us that people tend to project their own aspirations and ideals on to him. Thus he seems to be able to say to Americans that he is going to spend trillions, that he’s going to spread the wealth around, that he inherited problems, etc.; and then the media proclaims him (with some flagging enthusiasm) a genius, ascribing to him the virtues that they want to believe he possesses.

European Jews first and then American Jews have been engaged in a long struggle related to defining their Jewishness in a modern world. Classic articulations of this struggle are described by Leo Strauss and countless other Jews. The “progressives” representd by Peretz, Wieseltier, et al., hoped that remaking American into a “progressive” America.2.1 would be the achievement and the legacy of the liberal Jews, and that progressive foreign policy would help create a lasting peace in the mideast that tamed what they saw as the virulent aspects of Zionism.

Yes, Obama has many Jews in his administration. But will not Rahm find himself under the bus, as will many others, when their time comes? (Solzhenitzyn describes in great detail the hopes and actions of the Russian Jews in the Revolution. It’s not simple and not pretty.)

So who or what (psychologist needed here) really sends Obama, and what is his goal? I am not conspiracy-minded. But everyone has a goal.

But Freeman’s real offense (and the president’s if he were to appoint him) is that he has questioned the loyalty and patriotism of not only Zionists and other friends of Israel, the great swath of American Jews and their Christian countrymen, who believed that the protection of Zion is at the core of our religious and secular history, from the Pilgrim fathers through Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy.

So that’s what is at the ‘core’ of America’s identity. And here I thought America was an actual nation with interests of its own. Guess I was wrong.

“0″ is not wasting money or time, he is doing exactly as the left and Islam want! “0″ is wasting our resources on black hole objectives that are intended to simple drain Americas life blood, waste troops on a Lost cause, embolden our enemies with “soft power” and throw hard earned US citizen money at everything except what might work! Wrecking his way to submission and our servitude. Folks there ain’t even enough good men left to start a resistance with……

“Chas Freeman is actually a new psychological type for a Democratic administration. He has never displayed a liberal instinct and wants the United States to kow-tow to authoritarians and tyrants, in some measure just because they may seem able to keep the streets quiet.”

That is a great comment. The only thing about it is that type of Democrat really isn’t new; this craven type has been around for a while. What’s new is that you have actually described them.

The authoritarian leftist marxist democrats should never ever be described as ‘liberal”. They are not in any positive classically liberal sense “liberal” . They are only liberal in their tolerance for terrible, evil behavior particularly behavior that pushes the envelope towards chaos. The general public’s ( and too many conservative’s) confusion with so called liberal policies ( actually authoritarian leftist policies) and the classical liberal ideas of democracy, liberty and free markets creates a giant fig leaf for conniving BIg Liars like Obama to hide behind.

The “liberal” or “progressive” who advocates authoritarian destruction of liberties in pursuit of some ill defined “progressive” public good like ” waging peace” or “protecting the earth” or providing “Universal Health Care” is all too common these days.

Multiple examples of the authoritarian “Progressives” handiwork are hidden in the stimulus package and the recent executive orders of our Dear Leader. Neat little things like the “compartive research health care provsions” which will eventually ration health care and the the provisions requiring carbon output reductions due to the Polar Bear Extinct Species decision are buried nicely away in the stimulus package. Coming next is the Card Check which not only enables easy unionization of the American workplace but proscribes binding arbitration after 90 days in a labor dispute. (With I’m positive, some pro business arbitrator right?). I can imagine many, many employers faced with this kind of crap, just throwing in the trowel and closing down. Some stimulus to the economy.

@Mark 11
Perhaps this is God’s way of informing the 78% of Jews who voted for Obama that the message of the Prophets was not, repeat not, “and thou shalt all be left-wing Democtats and that shall makest thou holy unto thy Lord.”

this is so tiresome. how can anyone look at the arabs and prefer them and their 300 million tantrums, 1.5 trillion square miles of dar al Islam, and truly self-evidenlty unbeautiful culture, to the extent that these people would effectively *prefer* the destruction of the jewish state. it is truly, obviously perverse on every level.

But if some people of erudition and refinement have misjudged Mr. Obama it isn’t because they are bad or lousy people. On the contrary: I think that many of those who recognized BHO correctly from the beginning did so because they were a little bit shady themselves

I firmly disagree. I think it’s the other way around – the phrase “you can’t cheat an honest man” comes to mind. Too many of Obamas supporters were willing to sign on to his scam because they thought he had some candy in his pocket for them. In some cases, the most despicable ones – what they wanted was for Obama to stick it to someone else. They wanted someone to put those hick Bush supporters in their place and remind everyone that “people of erudition and refinement” are superior to the masses. Envy and greed among his supporters propelled him to office.

The Rise of Barack Obama is a testament to the power of leverage in modern American politics and social policy. What we call the “left” in America has been a master at this game.

From getting a lone judge to loose America’s lunatics onto the streets of our cities in the 70′s, to Roe v. Wade and a lone bureaucrat turning afirmative action into what it has become, the left has known that it could defy majority sentiment and American values at will. Succesful referendum against gay marriage? Fuggedaboudit, a pliant judge will overturn it. Constitutional Amendments? We don’t need no stinkin’ Constitutional Amendments! The Constitution has been “amended” miriad times by judges and bureaucrats over recent decades.

The ultimate form of leverage is when an ideological minority grabs hold of a major political party. THAT is how we got Obama.

I know what JMH means, in the sense that there is a category of people—for example, those led by Jesse Jackson—who believe that whatever the rich people (or any white-privilege people) own was acquired via the exploitation, historical and current, of minorities and the underclass. In this sense, the Obama and Democrat budgets and actions are reparations by another name.

This envy, however, is not why my wife, kids, neighbors, colleagues, etc. voted for Obama and continue to idolize him. They believed Bush was mean, and worse. They believed that all of the bad things the media reported about him, about military actions, about law enforcement, about rule of law, etc., were true and that Bush was motivated by meanness. My wife and friends value fairness over justice, equality over rights, and generally mean well. They, like Peretz, now have to gradually come to terms with what Obama’s actions mean.

One popular commentator hits the mark in saying that the right believes the left is wrong, while the left believes the right is evil. In a time of lessening influence of formal religion, standards of decency are influenced by politics and group-think. It is a matter of faith that Bush was and is evil. Obama can bank on that.

If I had to answer my own question about what drives Obama, I would say “justice” sends him. But he defines justice as fairness, and fairness in a Marxist sense. And he is probalby Marxian (why not just cut to it) because he hates his mother. And he idealizes his father, who was an internationalist intellectual and nominal muslim. Obama’s final goal? Pursue justice, invalidate positive law. And use your get out of jail and collect $200 card at every opportunity.

In an unguarded moment, I can imagine Obama blurting out, as does the anarchist in “The Iceman Cometh,” “I want them to be my slaves!”

Per Wretchard’s comment that “many of those who recognized BHO correctly from the beginning did so because they were a little bit shady themselves” I would add that this is easy for the Bible-believing Christian. We recognize all people, and especially ourselves (since we have to live with ourselves) as sinners. Obama’s indulgence of the BHO cult is, in that regard, particularly egregious. His arrogance in thinking he could be President when he’s produced nothing but hot air in his life is phenomenal. In fact, if he’s to be treated as “sui generis” (one of a kind) his kind is an unsurpassed vanity. We’re in trouble, folks. Obama is as Obama does.

Anyone have a reference on Peretz’ statement that the Bushes got rich off the Saudis? I know they were friendly with Bandar but it goes considerably farther saying they got rich thereby. I remember that Papa Bush sold his oil company (Zapata) years ago for a lot of money plus the family was wealthy already.

I think that many of those who recognized BHO correctly from the beginning did so because they were a little bit shady themselves

I would add to Evanston1′s comment about the Christian understanding of sin as a protective factor the psychiatric diagnosis of narcissism. Anyone who has ever tangled with a narcissist, whether in the family, workplace, school, or wherever, will recognize the breed a mile off the next time they encounter one. BHO is a case study in pathological narcissism.

Some have said that the reason most American Jews voted for Obama is that liberalism is a mental disorder. But it’s also true that a great many American Jews don’t really care much about what happens to Israel.

Gordon, I’ve seen multiple references over the years to Pappa Bush, especially, having a soft spot for the House of Saud. He did, after all, go to war in Kuwait to save Saudia Arabia’s bacon (so to speak).

There was a picture of Baby Bush walking hand-in-hand with Abdullah (I think it was) on a state visit 2 or 3 years ago. You might google around that time, because I think there was a *lot* of comment about the closeness of the two families as evidenced by that picture.

I could never make up my mind if Baby Bush was nice to the Saud’s on his own dime, or if he behaved that way because Daddy said so.

Believe me, Obama is motivated by neither. He is motivated by power, vanity and a psychotic hatred of the West, and at the root of these is intense self loathing. He may be a true Marxist, but even this “faith” is but a vessel for darker forces in his psyche.

But i tend to agree in your description of a segment of Obama’s supported (must be tough for you to come home to it).

Care to venture what percentage they are? I think e might be surprised. I’d bet at least a third. The questions are, are they in the “muddle”? Can the swayed? If so, what sort of suasion will move them?

As for this…
My wife and friends value fairness over justice, equality over rights, and generally mean well. They, like Peretz, now have to gradually come to terms with what Obama’s actions mean.
</I.

Well, all I can say is that the path to someplace or the other that is paved with good intentions.

Actually i can say more. I hear this out of many liberals, and I have to wonder if they really belive these things, actively work for them in their lives or have ever seen any consequences to these beliefs. It is more a sort of “moral vanity” and so long as this “morality posture” does not inpinge on there lives and peer preassure keeps them to it, then they will stick to it. But they hardly seem deeply held beliefs. One wonders how deep to the bone their beliefs truly are.

It is more a case of intellectual and moral laziness, and social fearfulness. They have not examined these beliefs at all in the traditional sense, nor given them the mature adult assent that one assumes in a sober, religious observer who strives to live out his faith every day.

Though there is no doubt that Collectivism in all its forms comprises a “Faith”, I wonder if these people that you mentions are truly in the “faithful” of the Left, or if they even understand what “the Left” actually means. I ponder this because I wonder if some portion of them could be peeled off if they were really challenged to face the consequences of their “beliefs” and the intellectual and moral sloth that lead them to hold them.

As for the Bush hatred, well, it serves the same purpose for both true believers and the lazy: Projection, deflection and/or transference. It is a mark of the challenging times that we live in. He became the receptacle of the fears and evasions of weak minds and souls in a radically changing world.

It will be hard to change this for it would require those so afflicted to face themselves. This they will rarely do.

I still have to ownder if a major culpit in all of this is the lack or religous obsevation.

Well, what are we going to do? Are we going to sit back and let socialism ruin the country? Are we going to organize? When will it be too late? Will it be “the last straw” when there is nothing left? This is only the first month of this idiots administration, can we afford 4 years of this? Do we need to rise up?

Most of the people that recognized BO were not shady, they were people that have been observing and dealing with the Left for most of their lives and know how they operate. They were informed and watchful patriots that know when they are being lied too.

W, your notion of “shady but astute” might apply to those who recognized what he was and saw an opportunity in backing him, but it certainly does not apply to his opposition, and it is a rather odd thing to say, I might add.

I think that we have to understand that the vast majority of people in the USA have no idea that we have been locked in a deadly “Cold Civil War” for some time. They have no idea what sort of stuff the Democratic Party is made out of, or what their true aganda is.

I was probably basically wrong to describe those who saw through Obama as “little shady”. But during the campaign a number of people who I respect suddenly switched sides to Obama because they believed what he said; and from a rational point of view, based on what he said, one could argue that he was a better candidate than McCain, who didn’t particularly thrill me either.

My own feelings toward Obama came from what I’d call a “sixth sense”. I think commenters will recall how his video about the “okey dokey” scam (during the primaries) made my hair stand on end because there was something in his micro-expression, something just at the edge of his smile that made me wonder about him. I still wonder.

I think that men of good will are sometimes unwilling to imagine bad behavior in men of apparent culture. A child who has grown up in a good, loving home, is in some ways, easier to fool than a street kid. So I am certain that a large number of people supported Barack Obama simply because they took him at face value. If I did not, it’s because I’m the sort who watches hands in alleyways, though I must say in my defense, that I don’t buy drinks for girls out of unmarked bottles.

At any rate people find out the truth in the end. What will we discover about BHO? Time will tell.

Agree completely. My brother in law is a conservative skeptic, small govt kind of guy, not a Democrat. I cannot explain how, but he preferred what Obama was saying to what McCain was saying. Well, fine, but how can an observant person BELIEVE what Obama was saying?

My brother in law, as of yesterday, is looking to Obama to double down on Afghanistan, take the fight to Pakistan, and stop Iran from getting the bomb. Words fail me.

IF it is the intent of the political majority in control of the congress and the executive to “transform” the republic into an authoritarian state (thus completing a process that has been ongoing for quite some time) how do we face them? They are moving very quickly to concentrate power and will, without doubt, move very soon to stifle dissent, silence or marginalize opposition, emasculate the military and disarm the citizenry. If they cannot be stopped through the “normal” political process what is the alternative and how is that alternative put into effect?

Lord knows I never in my life thought I would write such a thing as matter for serious discussion. I really, really hope I am engaging in overly paranoid speculation. But one thing I am seeing more and more is that an awful lot of people who I think are pretty sane are beginning to express similar apprehensions.

I was probably basically wrong to describe those who saw through Obama as “little shady”.

programmer says:

No Wretchard. I get what you were saying. Anyone who has had to walk on the shady side of the street, either just to survive, or defending against the encroaching darkness that wells up and wraps around people we have grown up with and trusted, develops, as you say, “a sixth sense”, or as I like to tell my grandsons, a sense of devout cynicism. You have learned to watch the eyes and hands for “tells” and have developed, I suspect the hard way, to always be on your guard.

I had lunch just yesterday with a liberal friend who hates Bush and voted for Obama. Listening to him rant at the table yesterday, a young Indian software developer laughed and said to me in the soft, lilting speech that some Indians have, “Bob, [he] sounds just like you, a strong conservative, a Republican”. Only a strong will kept me from choking on my hamburger.

w. saw something in a micro expression; my glimpse of something wrong was a word he used in an otherwise innocous response to a campaign question about his message vs rural opposition; that ‘…until they understand it I’m sure they’ll continue to resist.”

“resist” –i don’t recall ever before hearing that word used in that way, in that context. It struck me then (& still does now) as a Stalinist ‘tell’ if ever there was one.

It has puzzled me no end, for the extent of the Bush administration, that American Jews seem to be totally oblivious to the effect that continued support for the liberal Left in American politics may likely end up with results that they as a group will NOT like.

So, my question is, do American Jews really support Israel? Or are there factions within factions here that are not discernable to the average non-Jew (or at least me) and really have no concern if Israel falls beneath the onslaught of the enemies arrayed against them?

As far as the inexplicable Jewish vote, it’s a head-scratcher for sure, but undoubtedly a case of the strength-through-weakness (and vice-versa) principle –the ancient Greek “edynamothesan apo astheneias” if Jamie Irons is watching –applied here as “tradition”. “Tradition”, that which has been most reliable through the millenia as a survival behavior, was flipped upside down (the marxist trope), strength-to-weakness, in the election.

Also, there’s the whole overlay of urban vs rural miscommunication; urbanites adapted to close proximity are necessarily verbal while rurals with space to spare solve not by debate but by distance (‘going out to the barn for awhile’). So urbanites can easily see McCain’s rurals as slightly retarded. Especially after eight years of GWB’s wildly unsuccessful attempts to bridge that verbal/non verbal imprint.

Wretchard, you still don’t get it, because all due respect you are not an American, or certainly not a native one, and you don’t understand the eternal struggle of America.

It’s about CLASS.

It has always been this way, since before Andrew Jackson, all the way to the Whiskey Rebellion.

Obama’s backers backed him because they saw him as ths SWPL avatar, the “class man” who would advance their class interests of being fashionable yuppies earnestly working at “world changing” jobs and such.

American Jews are no different nor are they immune to that class appeal, indeed they are the most vulnerable. Most Jews would happily see the people of Israel erased in a nuclear cloud, even if they have relatives there, as long as their class interests were advanced. Which means being “important,” status mongering the like which Larry David on Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm noted.

Hatred for Sarah Palin and love for Obama are the same thing, hatred for the lower-class competitor, always White, often male, who holds traditional values and comes generally from a Scots-Irish background, and love for the exotic “Other” who is magically assigned superior intellect and moral qualities over boring ordinary middle class men and women.

The only Jewish populations immune to this class conflict are those who’s most powerful identity is bound up in middle/lower class striving, not yuppie status politics. The kind of people who put family, work, and God and Country above having the fashionable opinions and meeting with “important” people.

People like myself who hated Obama from the first appearance of him, hated him because we instantly knew he was our enemy. The way the Kennedys, Al Sharpton, Bill Ayers, and the usual coalition of upper class snobs and elitists and minority grievance tribunes who both hate working and middle class Whites, are always our enemy.

A man like Mitt Romney might or might not be our enemy, Sarah Palin will always be our ally, but a man like Obama will ALWAYS be our sworn enemy, as people like him have ALWAYS been our sworn enemy. They hate us, they always hate us, and we know them at a glance.

We will put up with being cheated, ala Clinton or a Blago or a Schwarzenegger, but not hated and the attempt to eradicate us from the face of the earth. [I know many like myself who despite several degrees still retain our class and regional identity, and know well how much we are hated. You'd be surprised.]

This is not anything new, and came with the Jamestown settlers and the first pilgrims. America is either run by the Gentry, or the people.

I think that men of good will are sometimes unwilling to imagine bad behavior in men of apparent culture.

I still go back to “you can’t cheat an honest man.” Men of good will can be tempted too, and it’s that temptation that hustlers like Obama use to mask their intentions from the suckers.

There is no way that an intelligent man of good will who resists the tempation to get something for nothing would ever vote for Barack Obama. Buckets brother-in-law wanted something and thought Obama would deliver it on the cheap. What was it he wanted? I don’t know, only he can answer that. The people that Wretchard respects who switched to Obama wanted something and thought Obama would deliver it at below market costs. That’s why they were inexplicably willing to believe what he said, even though there was no – absolutely no – reason to believe him.

Obama was like the Shadows from Babylon 5 – asking people “what do you want?” and then promising it, all the while really bending those who signed on to his will.

What did all these fools and useful idiots want? Many things I’m sure. A win in the class struggle Whiskey mentions in some cases. A way to “racial healing” that doesn’t involve confronting the Jackson-Sharpton-Holder racehustling machine. A end to the burden of walking point against the Jihadies. Many other things too – he was everything to everyone.

They wanted these things without paying the costs, so they didn’t look very closely at the poke he was carrying. They didn’t read the ingredient list on the snake oil because they wanted to believe it was free of arsenic, 100% organic, and dolphin-safe. These men of good will gave into the temptation to get something for nothing and ended up getting suckered for everything and taking the rest of us along for the ride.

buddy: there is another aspect to language that divides rural an urban peoples.

“Rurals” have to pretty much live along side the same people day in and day out for years, sometimes all their lives. And it can go even beyond that: In the community I grew up in there were people alive when I was a boy that well remembered my great grandfather.

There are a whole set of mores and protocols that go with this. The intimacy of observed behavior, often in shared venues over many years makes for a more honest, direct and humble mode of speaking. There must be patience with the speech of others for you are going to be talking often with them over the years. Things only change gradually in most peoples lives, yet one must talk with and greet the same almost person every day. Conversation is less about the passioned exchange of information or personal position than it is about the common chords of reassurance and fellowship, if not friendship. And humor, always wry, understated humor. Opinions and information will flow out in due course; there is no need for the melodramatic.

One has to learn “to visit”, as they say. Stating the obvious is not considered an insult or evidence of obtuseness, it is merely a way to get the “visit” started. Flourishes and rhetorical posturings are looked upon as “showing off”, a cardinal sin in the hinterlands. Everyone knows who you are, what you are capable of and what you think–there is no need for that.

This is almost exactly the opposite of how language is used in urban life.

To the question of why would Jews back Obama (or any Liberals for that matter)I think Whiskey is right by bringing in the Larry David angle. As a New Yorker, I’ve been around urban, educated (meaning “been brainwashed at college”) Jews my whole life, and they are deeply status obsessed. That’s the principle motivation behind their extensive philanthropy: you build a wing on a hospital because they name it after you. It’s a kind of class striving that may or may not mask deep insecurity, I couldn’t say, but the striving is obvious. Why do rich NY Jews spent $100,000+ on a 13 year old’s Bar Mitzvah? To impress, of course, to be the biggest macher.

Politically, Republicans will never capture this segment of the Jewish vote until Republicans can somehow become “cool.” And they will never be “cool.”

It is simply social suicide in New York to have said ANYthing good about Bush these past eight years. I don’t know if people in saner places can understand it. If you find yourself with another Republican in a room you have to make furtive eyes at one another, but you dare not speak. The social pressure to be a Liberal is crushing in its weight.

I imagine it’s much the same in Chicago, LA, San Fran, etc. Liberal Jews are very urban, very hip, very society-oriented. They will never switch to the un-cool party, even if it means the deaths of their brethren in Israel. After all, those religious Jews… they’re just not the right sort of people.

As a final note, I would add that my description above applies pretty much identically to non-Jewish NY Liberals as well, except for the Bar Mitzvah part, of course. They are all driven by status and peer pressure. I just feel that within the Jewish community it’s ramped up to an even higher level.

What does “cool” mean? Ann Althouse talks about why Bobby Jindal can never be “cool”, why commentators say “Oh, God!” when he speaks when they would say the same words if BHO spoke, but with another emphasis.

But here’s my take. I’m guessing Bobby Jindal doesn’t care. That’s the key difference. He’s not part of the co-dependent relationship that some liberals have with minorities. Strange as it may seem to some, a lot of people don’t walk around thinking “I’m a minority.” They don’t inhabit that world; they’re not part of the dance. And therefore they can’t participate in the “cool”.

Now one might say, ‘what a trite observation’. Hardly. For most of the past fifty years billions of people defined themselves according to a certain point of view — the anticolonialists in the Third World most of all — they were as obsessed by race and cultural symbology as the KKK. Race is never far from Robert Mugabe’s mind. That’s why he’s in a perverse way, “cool” to those who like Marxists. But what Globalization and the rise of China and India really mean is that for the first time in decades, there are lots and lots of people who don’t give a damn. Their axis is no longer London-Paris-New York. If Maureen Dowd doesn’t like their fashion sense, what they eat, the scientific devices they invent, the achievements they attain, they couldn’t care less.

Fortunately, this creates — and I hesitate to use the word — a new supply of “white people”. Not “white” as in racially Caucasian, but white as in confident; before the dance was invented. Now I am treading on dangerous ground here: but the bottom line is this. There’s a new generation of people who don’t want to ever be “cool” like Barack Obama. They just want to be themselves.

There’s a new generation of people who don’t want to ever be “cool” like Barack Obama. They just want to be themselves.

I think there’s a great deal of truth in that. But I’ve also seen that American culture sucks people in very quickly. Working in the software biz, of course I see plenty of Indians and Chinese. The engineer types are often like Bobby Jindal, in that they have little concern for being cool. But the Indian kid who came to America and went to Stanford or Columbia and then got his MBA at Yale… he’s just as much a status-obsessed urban striver as the kid that grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He wants his Beemer, he watches all the right shows, he mocks Bush and he votes Democrat right down the line.

wretchard, you’re right –i grew up in the state and most of my relatives are natives –the folks –and Jindal –are in whole different world than the cold blue castles of Metropolis. Jindal is a cheerful, genial innocent (innocent in that he genuinely assumes good will on the part of strangers) highly intelligent technocrat who just churns out the product.

Though class as it is thought of in European and Marxist terms does not really match.

Basically, the conflict in America is between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, between the Redsticks and Spanish, British, and New England aristocratic allies, and the settlers, between Sarah Palin and Maureen Dowd.

Part of it is James Webb’s book “Born Fighting” and the arc of Scots-Irish settlements, but a man like Rudy Guiliani, or Siegel and Schuster, or Jack Kirby, or Stan Lee, or Bobby Jindal can claim this. As can and did Jackie Robinson (lifelong Republican), Duke Ellington, and the Marsalis family.

It is a matter of belonging to those who were not born to wealth and power, and do not hope to become a person of manners in that aristocracy.

Bill Gates is my enemy as surely as Obama is, and Bill Ayers is, and the legions of Gossip Girl fans. Conversely, Larry David, the South Park guys, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are not my enemies but allies, because they don’t want to join the aristocratic crowd. Even if Larry David’s particular politics do not agree with mine (highly likely I am sure) he seems as unwilling as I am to join that social set and espouse that world view.

As a former New Orleans resident, I can say that Jindal won on the issue of competence, shared values, and identity. He convinced the Mike Foster voters he was one of them, a Catholic and Indian ancestry man in Lousiana, divided by racial, linguistic, religious, and geographical lines. Don’t get fooled, he can good-old-boy with the best of them.

Peretz is a fool, and so are all the others of his ilk, never mind that he is beginning to see the error of his ways. Anyone who thinks he can rely on the USA as an ally had better wake up. This country is not what it used to be. The evidence has been there for some time, but many have refused to see it. The Jewish vote in this country has just managed to turn itself against its own interests: Get ready to defend your own interests by yourselves, because we will not help you. That is the simple fact of the matter. The USA no longer honors alliances.

I would laugh if I were not so horrified by what my county is about to become.

It so happens, there is an essay in the latest Claremont Review of Books by William Voegeli on “The Roots of Liberal Condescension.” It’s quite good. However, it’s not available online. But you should all be subscribers to Claremont Review anyway (www.claremont.org). I got mine in the mail today.

Since I have to quote by hand, I will limit myself to one pungent comment:

“Political parties have traditionally been coalitions held together by beliefs and interests. The modern Democratic Party may be the first where the mortar is a shared sensibility. The cool kids disdain the dorks, and find it infuriating and baffling that they ever lose a class election to them.”

Adolescents. The whole friggin’ country is being run by aged adolescents.

Obama doesn’t so much fool folks, as folks fool themselves. Read this post by Norm Geras, a very bright guy, and see how he makes Obama out to be brilliant and profoundly moral. All based on words in a speech. I don’t even know how to begin arguing with folks in that state of mind.

The idea of “we” is a remarkably mutable thing which depends largely on the context. It can mean we [enter nationality], we gringos, we westerners, we foreigners, we Christians, we Muslims or we civilized people depending on the circumstances and most especially, upon who “them” happens to be at the moment. I met a lady recently who described herself as an atheist Shi’a. I am not so naive as to think that it can’t mean “we” members of the [fill in the blanks] race on occasion. I’ve been approached by a Chinese lady or gent asking for directions more times than I can count. So people do define themselves, occasionally, by race.

But it’s awfully exhausting to be a professional stereotype. It’s like wearing a uniform. Who can do it the whole day? A friend of mine described an elderly gent who spent the Second World War as British spy in Berlin. He worked as a waiter in a place frequented by German officers. His greatest fear was that he would dream in English and give himself away. Even though his German was flawless it was hard to keep the mask on all the time.

Personally I think we all want the option of changing into these identities in the same way we would don an outfit for a Halloween party. It’s fun that way. But we don’t actually want to be stuck in the costume after the party. Then it stops being fun. When I see these professional minorities — Ward Churchill comes to mind — I ask myself, “man, don’t you get tired doing that all day? Do you secretly go out to Burger King when nobody is looking? Don’t you want to be just a plain person sometimes, just old Wardo?” That makes me a little suspicious of people who always sound one note. Ding, ding, ding. I think life is more various than that. At least, I hope it is.

Chuck: I think this boils down to narcissistic projections and the intellectually corrupting influence of the Left’s subtle hijacking of language through some rather underhanded rhetorical techniques.

There is also a strong dose of laziness and superficiality in this sort of thing that Geras is about.

Of course with Obama, as with any president, speeches are a team effort so one hardly knows who wrote the speech. Still, we must ultimately give the credit to Obama.

If you ask me, many of the more garrulous “intellectuals” on the left tend to be more clever than intelligent, and seem more schooled than educated, at least in the sense that “educated” means erudite, cultivated and possessed of serious probity. As for “brilliance” they tend to confuse this with “flashy”.

I do not know if any of you have read the writing of the current Pope, but they are worth reading if ony to contrast them to the prattle of Obama, or left of center “thinkers”. One need to really care about religious matters at all to catch the signal differences in substance; the depth of thought, the cultivation, the education and the seriousness of mind is quite striking, and richly rewarding I might add. Here is some true “brilliance”. (Here I am talking mainly of his work authored before his rise to the Holy See.)

That anyone could consider Obama “brilliant” is indeed baffling, even if this judgment is made on the basis of the text of a speech. The bespeaks of either shallowness or a willful suppression of critical thinking. Of course this sort of elevation of the mediocre is common on the Left, particularly when it comes to their politicians. Thus were Kennedy, Clinton (and even Gore) deemed.

While we are on this, it is very interesting to go back and read some of GWB’s key speeches as they are quite wonderfully written. Again, one must grant it was no doubt a team effort here, but so too it is with Obama. Furthermore, Reagen’s writings show a much deeper mind than any of is detractors on the left.

“Fortunately, this creates — and I hesitate to use the word — a new supply of “white people”. Not “white” as in racially Caucasian, but white as in confident; before the dance was invented. Now I am treading on dangerous ground here: but the bottom line is this.
There’s a new generation of people who don’t want to ever be “cool” like Barack Obama. They just want to be themselves.”
—
But the MSM Suckup types keep morphing into weirder and weirder shells of “human” beings.
Not to mention their bizare conception of “Journalism.”

peterike/58; The modern Democratic Party may be the first where the mortar is a shared sensibility.

Exactly. Few Dems are blatantly crooked, but along the Pareto Rule that’s the party that crooks find useful. It makes for theater in public (your organized crime ‘friendly’ speechifyin’ s-chip ‘for the children’ while his backers sell them heroin, and so on). Makes them hard to look at. The other night, Obama speaking with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi sitting behind him –three people whose connections can be but fractionally acknowledged –was just too depressing a tableau; i was weak, i couldn’t watch but a minute or two. The easiest thing will always be to look away.

“man, don’t you get tired doing that all day? Do you secretly go out to Burger King when nobody is looking?”

What do you suppose Obama turns into when no one is looking, when he’s tired of being elegant? My guess is he’s kneeling with his forehead on the floor facing Mecca, praying for the death of a nation of infidels.

“The USA no longer honors alliances. ” Yep, I would agree that Obama’s administration will drop Israel under its capacious bus.

It may not be so easy to do so, though: Israel holds a lot of valuable cards in this game. It has nukes, and the technical ability to deliver them wherever needed. It has an economy that produces added value, rather than an economy based on the dole.

Israel is a country NOT because the UN said so in 1948, but because it won a bunch of WARS… the way other countries have defined their borders to the satisfaction of history and their neighbours. However, Israel is crippled by a need to please the UN and other ‘civilized countries’, and therefore asks to be kicked by the bullies of this world.

Every time I read that yet another Israeli leader and American President chatters about buying ‘peace’ by giving up Israeli land, I cringe. Why is Israel insisting on sounding so WEAK when it doesn’t have to?

“The USA no longer honors alliances. ” Yep, I would agree that Obama’s administration will drop Israel under its capacious bus.

It may not be so easy to do so, though: Israel holds a lot of valuable cards in this game. It has nukes…It has an economy that produces added value…

When Rome dithered too long and failed to honor the alliance with Saguntum, the people of Saguntum built a huge pyre and burned their treasure in view of the Carthagenians before killing themselves. Perhaps the people of Israel will build a different sort of pyre if America dishonors our alliance. It’s worth pointing out that the wave of revulsion Romans felt for themselves when they realized how they had failed to live up to their word swept them into the Second Punic war. Which led to the destruction of Carthage and the rise of Roman hegemony over the Mediterranean, but not before Rome itself was nearly destroyed. And the damage Hannibal did to the Roman yeomanry was probably ultimately responsible for the descent from Republic to Empire.

But it’s awfully exhausting to be a professional stereotype. It’s like wearing a uniform. Who can do it the whole day?…That makes me a little suspicious of people who always sound one note. Ding, ding, ding. I think life is more various than that. At least, I hope it is.

For some people it isn’t. We all know addicts. I think there are those who become addicted to a role they play. It becomes a hobby and the hobby becomes a vocation. In some cases, a decent paying one for the more audacious like Wardo. Or Barney Frank. And if the role is as a professional victim, or as one of the professionally offended, it offers so much opportunity to act out and so much psychic armor for failure.

Or, we could just be living in a constructed universe, an alien scientific experiement with a hundred or so real people and six billion simulated ones. The aliens didn’t have the budget for six billion unique simulations, so there are only a couple dozen different models with minior tweaks to hair and eye color between the copies.

I have no sympathy for Peretz, or any other regretful or future self-kicking Obama voter. There was plenty of information out there available and an almost unbelievable track record of radical and dubious associations stretching back to Obama’s youth. The writing was on the wall but they didn’t want to see it. If these people want to redeem themselves they can join us on the ramparts in the not too distant future.

peterike, i can second your emotions. status is pretty much the Ur-moral, to such an extent it makes nonsense of all sociological and psychological explanations. there is some Thing toward which they all throb, which animates the city, which makes thousands of bright young people immiserate themselves in genuine squalor and un-beauty. manhattan and its predilections is the heart of american darkness, for all its glamour.

Before a month was out, certain people were beginning to look a bit uncomfortable as they defended their votes.
It’s gotten worse, exponentially, for them.
Laugh? I thought I’d cry.
’cause it’s too late for their hard-earned wisdom to affect the election.
“You can fool enough of the people just long enough. And that’s enough.”
Thing is, so many of them thought they were so much smarter than the rest of us.
I’ve been, more or less explicitly, forbidden to talk politics with some relatives and friends because they don’t know enough. It embarrasses them. But I’m the dummy.

SamIam is absolutely right, there was an incredible record that all pointed the right way. Some (most?) people didn’t pay attention and the media sure covered it all up, but Peretz has no excuse except, in Chicago parlance, he’s a dick.

The Middle East will continue down the same road it has been on for years, with more ugly border incidents between various terror factions (Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, etc.) and Israel. This grinding conflict has been going on too long for a group of effeminate lightweights that now occupy the Executive Branch of the US Government to effect real change.
Iran is frankly too incompetent to wage a real war and do what their retarded dwarf president of that beknighted country wants it to do. That country is not the Third Reich revisited. With oil prices dropping and their own oil fields output declining, they are headed for an economic Waterloo.
Marty Peretz, Jonathan Chait and the rest of the drooling adolescents at TNR got what they wanted, and I hope they are happy, which may not actually be possible for “liberal progressives”. They are in perpetual angst about the status of “mankind”, and as Wretchard has asked, don’t they ever get tired and want to put down the mask once in a while?

I don’t have any time right now to go into depth on this point, but if any of you think what is happening to our western world is new, I would suggest a review back in history to the time of the Jewish civil war under the Maccabees. Political correctness, multiculturalism and “Blue-State” Jews selling out “Red-State” Jews was already a reality in 175 BC!